Brooklyn Turns to Data to Help Solve Its Car-share, Parking Problem

The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) is riding on the wave of interest for car-sharing to reduce vehicle ownership in the city.

Through a two-year pilot program, the DOT hopes to reach its goal of ownership reduction with the overall goal of giving NYC drivers access to a rarity: more parking spaces.

According to BKLYNER, a local Brooklyn news source, the department will be designating around 300 on-street parking spaces and 300 other parking spots in multiple municipal parking facilities for participating car-share companies.

Companies like Enterprise, for example, allow consumers to rent cars for a short period of time.

The DOT hopes to put car-sharing “within convenient reach”, said NextCity. Curbside parking is popular in the city, but is far from easy for drivers to find.

Data will allow officials to see which vehicles and locations are being used most often.

New signs will show users where the reserved parking spots are, reading “Carshare Parking Only,” and will make clear which companies can park there. Participating car-share companies will be announced in the fall of this year.

The OCI serves to audit existing open data initiatives at municipalities and allows participating organizations to compare themselves against their peer groups and track their openness over time based on specific dataset classifications.

THE 2017 OPEN CITIES INDEX SURVEY

The 2017 Open Cities Index survey has now launched with additional questions to further capture the maturity of municipal open data initiatives across Canada. Click here to see the full methodology for the 2017 OCI. Please contact us to discuss how your community can participate in the 2017 survey in-take. The 2017 survey will close September 8th and the 2017 results will be published October 2nd.